For other uses of the title, see: Love's Pilgrimage (disambiguation)

Love's Pilgrimage (disambiguation)

The phrase Love's Pilgrimage has been used as a title for a number of literary works:* Love's Pilgrimage , a play by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, written c. 1615–16 and first published in 1647....

.

Love's Pilgrimage is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy

Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...

 by Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher....

 and John Fletcher

John Fletcher (playwright)

John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...

. The play is unusual in their canon, in that its opening scene contains material from Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

's 1629

1629 in literature

The year 1629 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*April 6 - Tommaso Campanella is released from custody in Rome, and gains the confidence of Pope Urban IV....

 comedy The New Inn

The New Inn

The New Inn, or The Light Heart is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy by English playwright and poet Ben Jonson.The New Inn was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 19 January 1629, and acted later that year by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre...

.

The problem

The common materials are Love's Pilgrimage, Act I, scene i, lines 25-63 and 330-411, and The New Inn, II,v,48-73 and III,i,57-93 and 130-68. Early researchers like F. G. Fleay

Frederick Gard Fleay

Frederick Gard Fleay was an influential and prolific nineteenth-century Shakespeare scholar.Fleay, the son of a linen draper, graduated from King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge , where he received mathematical training that was key to his later achievements...

 and Robert Boyle thought that the Jonsonian material in Love's Pilgrimage was authorial — that Jonson was one of the creators of the play. Modern critics favor the view that the common material, original with Jonson, was interpolated into Love's Pilgrimage during a revision, perhaps for a new production in 1635. (The office book of Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels

Master of the Revels

The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...

, records a payment of £1 received for renewing the license of the play on 16 September 1635.) It is possible that the revision was done by Jonson himself; but far more probably, it was the work of an anonymous reviser. The latter interpretation was first advanced by Gerard Langbaine

Gerard Langbaine

Gerard Langbaine was an English dramatic biographer and critic, best known for his An Account of the English Dramatic Poets , the earliest work to give biographical and critical information on the playwrights of English Renaissance theatre...

 in 1691

1691 in literature

The year 1691 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* The first of eight volumes of Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy Who Lived Five and Forty Years Undiscover'd at Paris is published; subsequent volumes are issued through 1694...

, who claimed that Jonson's work was "stolen" for the play.

Authorship

Apart from the Jonsonian interpolations, the play shows internal evidence of being a fairly typical Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I ....

 collaboration. Cyrus Hoy

Cyrus Hoy

Cyrus Hoy was a literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English at the University of Rochester...

, in his survey of authorship questions in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators, produced this division of shares between the two dramatists:

Beaumont — Act I, scene 1; Act IV; Act V;

Fletcher — Act I, scene 2; Act II, Act III.

The play is thought to have originally been written c. 1615–16, and therefore must have been one of the last plays Beaumont worked on before his 1616 death. Its early performance history is unknown; it was acted by the King's Men

King's Men (playing company)

The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...

 for King Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

 and Queen Henrietta Maria

Henrietta Maria of France

Henrietta Maria of France ; was the Queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I...

 at Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Greater London; it has not been inhabited by the British royal family since the 18th century. The palace is located south west of Charing Cross and upstream of Central London on the River Thames...

 in December 1636

1636 in literature

The year 1636 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 31 - The King's Men perform Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at St. James's Palace.*February - James Shirley's The Duke's Mistress is performed at St...

.

Source

The plot of the play derives from Las dos Doncellas, one of the Novelas ejemplares of Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...

, published in Spain in 1613

1613 in literature

The year 1613 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*English poet Francis Quarles becomes cupbearer to Princess Elizabeth....

 and in a French translation in 1615

1615 in literature

The year 1615 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 6 - Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace....

. (Fletcher relied on another of the Novelas for his solo play The Chances

The Chances

The Chances is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher. It was one of Fletcher's great popular successes, "frequently performed and reprinted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."...

.) It is thought that the playwrights depended upon the French translation. Love's Pilgrimage was first published in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio

Beaumont and Fletcher folios

The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...

 of 1647

1647 in literature

The year 1647 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Thomas Hobbes becomes tutor to the future Charles II of England.* Plagiarist Robert Baron publishes his Deorum Dona, a masque, and Gripus and Hegio, a pastoral, which draw heavily on the poems of Edmund Waller and John Webster's...

.